


call me by my name

by orphan_account



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/F, Gen, Katniss as the disciple who loved their messiah too much, Messiah!Prim, Religion, Religious Content, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Sibling Love, Siblings, Stigmata, and who died in their name at the feet of the cross, and who killed in their name
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-24
Updated: 2013-03-24
Packaged: 2017-12-06 08:06:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/733420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She counts a bead for every arrow she shoots, every tribute she kills, every dead body she burns on an altar to the name of her sister.</p>
            </blockquote>





	call me by my name

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't know this much about messiahs, christianism, religious imagery in general. I'm so sorry if I messed anything up, please let me know.  
> Also, warnings for THG-like violence.

Prim gives Katniss a rosary to take into the arena as a token, wooden beads that slip through her fingers at night, and she prays.

She was never the religious type, unlike Prim who kneeled down next to her bed every morning and every night, who on Sundays took to the woods and looked up at the sky like it was the roof to a church only she knew, like the whole world was her religion.

But she takes the rosary from Prim, the one she was given from their father’s deathbed, the one she had to pry from his cold, dead hand, bead after bead slipping through the hand of death until it was Prim’s to clutch, to believe in. She brings it with her to the arena, circles it around her wrist, and suddenly she can draw and shoot an arrow with precision, so much more accurate than before. Suddenly she can kill. And so she does.

At night she whispers in the wind the prayers that she knows, the prayers that she heard Prim say day after day back home in District Twelve, broken pieces of a prayer, broken pieces of a belief she did not know she had. But she believes in Prim about as much as Prim believes in God.

-

Prim gives Katniss a touch: her fingers, cold against Katniss’s forehead, leaving a rivulet of blood to tint her skin. By the time Katniss leaves District Twelve, leaves home for the train and the Capitol and the arena, Prim is bleeding to death on a bed, her eyes fixed on the sky beneath the crannied roof of their house, a bizarre shade of silver, her slim body touched by grace.

The sheets are pink and red, a crowd around the bed eyes trained on the wounds on this frail body, the crown of thorns around her head, tiny pinpricks around her scalp, and the holes in her hand leaking blood like they were struck by nails.

Katniss cannot stand to look at this presence in her sister’s body, this holiness that touched her and left her a cripple. She doesn’t understand the smile on her sister’s lips, but then again maybe the point is it isn’t hers to understand, so she kneels next to the bed and closes her eyes when Prim’s bony hand, the hand of a ghost and the hand of a saint, rests on her forehead. She closes her eyes when Prim slips the rosary through her balled up hand, bead after bead through her trembling fingers.

She doesn’t understand it, but she was always her sister’s keeper, and so now she stands up straight with her bow in her hand and she is her sister’s warrior and her disciple, and she vows to carry her word to the arena or die trying.

-

She counts a bead for every arrow she shoots, every tribute she kills, every dead body she burns on an altar to the name of her sister. They slip through her fingers like she’s treading water, they slip through her fingers as deadly as her arrows. She looks up at the sky above the arena and she says a prayer for her sister: that she be alive still when Katniss returns. She kneels on the col hard ground and she vows to fight for her sister, her lord and her savior.

Even so far away she can still feel the weight of her sister resting on her side, she can still feel herself lifting the brittle shell of a body up and up and helping her stand, helping her be.

-

She kills the career tributes last, after every other child has passed and burned with Prim’s name on their lips, repentance and Heaven waiting for them on the other side, and a smile for Katniss who set them free, the giver, the helping hand, the disciple who loved their messiah too much. She burns their bodies and scatters the ashes with a prayer, an apology, the rosary slipping through her fingers like she is relinquishing her free will. Bead after bead like a chain of dead bodies crumbling under her hand, like deliverance.

She grips an arrow in her hand, sharpened wood against the wooden beads, against the tinny cross hanging at the middle of the rosary, its edges cutting through the skin of her palm, her weapon and her lord tangled together for a last merciful kill. She plunges it through Cato’s heart while she grips around his body like a vice, and he breathes on her lips the last kiss of the dying, and he thanks her.

She throws him to the wolves.

-

On the stage of the Capitol they ask her for a speech, and she kneels and asks them to join them in a prayer. She speaks for Prim, the fire burning through her veins, the fire burning in her eyes, the lord steering her hand and giving her strength. They echo her words like the gold, the frankincense, the myrrh. They pray for repentance.

This is the day before they crowd around their tiny shack in District Twelve, their home and their hiding place, and grip Prim’s lifeless body, her breathing uneven and then gone, and nail her to a cross in the middle of the village, her face staring at the woods that were her church and her prison.

This is the day before Katniss crawls at her sister’s feet and wails, and turns her face to the sky to curse the God who led his progeny and his blood, his soul to die. This is the day before Katniss takes a last arrow in hand, rosary still tangled around her fingers, bead after bead counting her last breaths, the last seconds that she lives, and takes it to her heart.

**Author's Note:**

> So. This happened.  
> I was thinking about the lack of mention of any religion at all in THG, and it lead to this.  
> In the beginning I meant to write about Katniss as a messiah, about how cruel it is for anyone to love a messiah (Gale, Peeta, whoever) because a messiah cannot ever truly give this love back. A messiah only loves their lord.  
> But then I got sidetracked, and this happened.


End file.
